Field

United States social history, labor and working class history, digital humanities and public history

Research Interests

Tobias Higbie is an Associate Professor in the UCLA History Department, and the director of the department's Public History Initiative. He teaches classes on U.S. History, labor and social movement history, labor studies, and digital humanities/history. He is an advisor to the Institute for Research on Labor & Employment and the Labor & Workplace Studies undergraduate minor. Higbie is the author of Indispensable Outcasts: Hobo Workers and Community in the American Midwest, 1880-1930 (2003), and articles on migration, print culture, and working class education. Before coming to UCLA in 2007, Higbie taught labor history and contemporary economics for trade unionists at the University of Illinois, and directed a research center at the Newberry Library in Chicago. He holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Illinois.

“Unschooled but Not Uneducated: Print, Public Speaking, and the Networks of Informal Working-Class Education, 1900-1940,” pp. 103-125 in Adam R. Nelson and John L. Rudolph, eds., Education and the Culture of Print in Modern America (University of Wisconsin Press, 2010). Read it Here.

“Between Romance and Degradation: Navigating the Meanings of Vagrancy in North America, 1870-1940,” pp. 250-269 in Augustus Lee Beier and Paul Ocobock, eds., Cast Out: A Global History of Vagrancy. Ohio University Press, 2008.

Alongside our existing 12 sub-fields, the History Department supports a number of cross-field clusters. The clusters are intended to attract students and faculty to important themes and current in the historical discipline. The clusters will offer new courses, sponsor outside speakers, and convene Department-based workshops and seminars.